


Glass Half Full

by KipRussel



Series: Mind Full [2]
Category: Pacific Rim Uprising - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), Post-Movie: Pacific Rim: Uprising (2018), platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-13 12:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14112552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KipRussel/pseuds/KipRussel
Summary: A follow up to the ending of Uprising, and how Hermann and Newt might react to it. Hermann thinks back to when the war was won. (absolutely full of spoilers)





	Glass Half Full

The solitary cell on the Moylan Shatterdome didn’t look very solitary now. It had never actually seen use before. The PPDC never had any reason to use it. They had regular cells. Who would they need to capture? A Kaiju skinmite? A secondary brain? Some fanatic worshiper?

Well. They found a reason now.

Cuffed in the chair in the center was Newt, looking less beat up than before and more exhausted than ever. Someone had come in and wiped the blood off his face while he had been sedated. Newt— no, the Precursors, refused food and water. The Precursors wouldn’t let most people near him (not that anyone really trusted him anymore), so everything had been through IVs. The exhaustion from the past battle— the past _ten years—_ was starting to show in the dark gutters under his eyes.

Hermann was watching his friend from a make-shift work desk in set up in the corner. Papers were strewn carelessly across the surface. A recorder was whirring quietly. A few unread papers from the PPDC big wigs were stacked tall in the corner. Hermann hunched over in his chair, absorbed in the data pad he held, occasionally glancing up to check on his friend. Well. Glancing up to check if it was his friend.

For the past half hour the precursors in Newt’s head had been rambling on. Since Hermann first stepped foot in the cell they’d started laying into him. Provoking him. Taunting him. Trying to get some sort of rise out of him. “Oh, please, did they send you in to try and pull heart strings?” he mocked when Hermann arrived. He didn’t look up. He simply went to the desk and set down his cane. “You think, what, I’ll give up the information because we shared a lab together?” Newt laughed. “Oh, _Hermann_ ," his voice was irritatingly patronizing. "C’mon.”

Hermann could mostly tune it out as he went to work at the desk. But he... _they_ got to him when that _voice._ That awful, abyssal sound slipped in to Newt’s speech. Hermann’s veins went cold. “You _know_ you can’t just _bring_ him back, don’t you? What are _you_ going to do?” Hermann forced his eyes away from the screen and to the person in the chair. They laughed at him, shaking their head. The look in Newt's eyes was foreign, staring straight through Hermann. The laughter trailed off as Newt leaned back in his seat.

The room grew uncomfortably quiet again. Hermann slowly loosened his grip on the tablet. He didn’t realize he’d started to hold it so tight. White knuckled, he checked the vitals readout for Newt. He was sleeping now. Hermann let out a sigh of relief, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes. Nothing had really registered with him yet. How could he process this? How was he even supposed to handle it? Where did he begin? How could he even get Newt to work with them? Hermann stared blankly past the tablet for a few minutes, then readjusted his glasses and went back to his work.

“Hermann?” Newt croaked. Hermann jumped. Newt had lulled his head forward and was squinting in the light, looking toward the desk. “I know you can’t trust a word out of my— my mouth but—” Newt shut his eyes. “I’m really thirsty. My mouth is so dry, dude. I— I can’t— can you get me some water? Or anything. I’m—“ he trailed off.

Newt. It was him. Hermann didn’t know how he knew, but he _knew_ it was Newt.

Hermann hesitated a moment, hand hovering over the desk. Historically, trusting Newt ever since he'd...been like _that_ never ended well. Hermann set his jaw and scooped up a glass of water off the desk. Newt’s eyes slid open and shoulders relaxed as the other scientist crossed over to him.

“Dude, holy crap, thank you,” Newt said before Hermann had even taken a step. Hermann didn’t respond. He reached over to the chair controls and released one of the cuffs. Newt’s eyes widened. His eyes darted from his free hand to Hermann. “Whoa, whoa, what are you doing? What’s— what’s the trick here?” Newt open and closed his fist a few times before realizing he could move his arm again and cautiously moved it to his lap.

Hermann held out the water with a twinge of a sympathetic smile on his face. “Take it.” Newt glanced at the water, then back to Hermann’s face. He slowly reached for the glass and gently took it. Newt took a sip and realized just how dehydrated he really was and downed the whole glass in seconds, coughing up a storm.

Hermann yelped and reached out for the glass. “Slow down, Newt!”

Newt let out one final cough, then cleared his throat. With a cocked eyebrow he handed the cup back to Hermann. “Newt?” He looked at his hand for a moment and rolled his wrist. “You never call me Newt.” He set his hand in the cuff, turning back to Hermann.

Hermann’s brow knit together. “Yes I do.”

“Why?” Hermann... didn’t know how to answer that. Newt continued in his pause. “You’re usually all stuffy. Stickler for— for names and rules and not bringing me stuff like that.” Hermann’s face twisted. Did Newton really think that? He set a free hand gently on his friend’s arm.

“You’re my friend, Newt. You know that.”

Newt looked at Hermann’s hand, then smiled up at him. Hermann smiled back, but glanced down as he felt Newt’s arm go taut.

“Oh, you _sneaky_ little _bastard!_ ”

Hermann drew his hand back like he’d been burned. Newt's smile had spread into a wicked grin. Hermann's expression darkened and he lunged to shut the cuff on the chair.

Newt let out a grating laugh. “You know you’re not getting any information out of him— _me_ like that, don’t you?”

Hermann stood up straighter. He fumbled for a response, chasing down trains of thought, but all that escaped was a long sigh. Without a word or a look he turned back to his desk. Newt— no, not Newt. The Precursors continued to call after him, but Hermann didn’t make out any of what they said. Hermann picked up the tablet and set down the glass, lingering a moment, looking at it.

His thoughts wandered back to the time Newt first drifted. When he found him, seizing on the floor, nose bleeding, some contraption assembled out of scrap hooked up to his head and the specimen in a jar a ways away. How he had come to, terrified and shaking, rambling about what he saw. Hermann shuddered at the thought. The hive mind.

He felt it, too. When he shared the neural load with Newt. With the mind of each of the aliens. A million voices and memories, suddenly focusing on you, your consciousness, your thoughts. Boring their foreign eyes into your skull. The cool claw of their consciousness slipping up your spine and grabbing at your brain. The searing pain and headache that accompanied it. Hermann's stomach churned just to think about it. Newt took that on the first time by himself. No one else there to help, no one else who would truly know what it was like.

He had been sitting there, quivering, eyes bloodshot. He could barely form a coherent sentence. He asked for a glass of water. Hermann ran and got Pentecost instead. Then a glass of water.

His eyes drifted back up to where Newt sat now, restrained, a host for that creeping emissary of thought. The hive stared back at Hermann with a proud smirk.

Newt was in there. They’d get him back.


End file.
